Arkadia’s Comments (group member since Jan 17, 2010)

Arkadia’s comments from the JustAdventure+ Book Group group.

I'm about to go to sleep, but I just saw this topic so a quick little note until I write something longer:

LOVED Oryx and Crake. One of the most unique and refreshing post-apocalyptic tales I've ever read.

I was very disappointed in Year of the Flood. I knew it wasn't a 'sequel' per se, but expected a more fleshed out look into the universe of Oryx and Crake. Instead I was taken on a very bland journey through an extremely limited part of the O&C world with quite boring characters as my companions. While the book was well written in a technical sense, the story seemed quite pointless to me. Almost all of the events in the book seemed very small, the most interesting part of the book (in my opinion) happened in only a single paragraph. Atwood spent a lot of time on boring minutiae and skimmed over any interesting event that happened to crop up (of which there were very few, again, in my opinion).

For me the book went from bland and mostly pointless happening to bland and mostly pointless happening until it simply ended (and in an ambiguous way, too). I was left with the feeling of wasting my time -- "wait a minute, I just read over 400 pages and now it's over and NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED". I mean, stuff happened, but nothing I would think was worth putting in the effort to write a book about.

This emoticon sums up my reaction to reaching the end of the book-- :-|

That being said, I enjoyed Oryx and Crake and enjoy Atwood's writing enough to certainly at least pick up The Handmaid's Tale. Her books aren't quite as high on my to-read list as they previously were though. I'll be interested to hear your opinions on the book, Trav :)

Wow! Sorry I disappeared for so long guys, I've had a lot going on and my laptop is stillll broken. Haven't had much time to spend posting on anything :(

Anywayyyyy.. I recently went to Sydney and stayed in a hotel located a block away from this lovely used book store. I purchased Black House by Peter Straub & Stephen King and All That Remains by Patricia Cornwell.

Then yesterday I put in an online order for City Infernal by Edward Lee and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, the latter of which I've been dying to read for a long time now. I was holding out to get one of the fancy full-color editions (the book is apparently printed in a strange and unique fashion involving colorization of certain words) but they proved too hard to get so I finally broke down and purchased it. I figure if I come across a decently priced copy of the full-color version I can always buy that too =D

I've really been wanting to buy the spiritual sequel to a book I recently enjoyed, 'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood, titled 'The Year of the Flood', but I can't find a copy priced at an amount I'm comfortable spending (for the first time in my life I'm attempting to budget, and finding myself quite thrifty in the process). Keepin' my hawk eyes open =D

Thank you for the thread and recommendation, Trav :) I will certainly check Watson out. Horror fiction is what you may call a 'lifelong trend' for me, as it is the genre I started with and always go back to, and anything deviating from that is likely more of a real 'trend' for me. I actually have a reason for this particular non-fiction trend, that I shall PM you about :)

Besides non-fiction books on the mysterious and the supernatural, I've been focusing on horror anthologies for the last year or so. I really adore short stories, and I feel that short horror stories are typically the most effective of all. The great thing about short story collections is you get to witness such an amazing, broad amount of concepts and ideas in such a small amount of time. It really makes you impressed with the scope of the human imagination. I absolutely adore reading about all the strange and fascinating situations people come up with.

Ohh okay Trav. I understand now. I've been led to believe that pretty much all of Barker's later work is indeed dark fantasy (Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, etc). So it might just be this earlier volume and his earlier works that are so horror-bent? I think he also implied that in his introduction. So I suppose you could recommend him as a dark fantasy author if you added a side-note only to read his later works ^_^

Trav, I'm not sure you should review your opinion of an author based on a read-through of their earlier works, just as you shouldn't judge the skill of an artist based on works they did when they were 15 as opposed to 25 :) All told, it's an accomplishment that you like his later work much better than his earlier - he has progressed wonderfully then and I look forward to reading his later stuff :)

I just know I would hate for someone to read a recent work of mine and say "You are really good!" and then read some of the stuff I wrote five years ago and say "On second thought..."

I'm sure you know what I mean :)

But yes - I posted my opinion so far of the book on my Books of Blood comment page.

Oh no, I didn't realise. I suppose it is a massive book though so it makes sense. I received it as a gift a long time ago. :)

Hahaha I just had to make sure you didn't hold it against me if you didn't like it! :D I believe I most strongly recommended '999' by Al Sarrantonio - the book is far larger with far more gems. I think I mentioned I only really liked 2 or 3 of the DD stories and despised many of them :( I'll be curious to see how much your opinion differs though!

Hey, hey, hey Trav - I don't know if I per se RECOMMENDED Dark Delicacies - I said it was okay, but recommended ones much better =D That's okay though, let me know what you think of it :) And Ender's Game, too.

I spent an hour browsing through a used book store I had been meaning to get back to ever since purchasing a couple of hundred dollars worth of fascinating books on the occult and supernatural. They had a massive desk devoted to the genre - delightful old and creepy looking books full to the brim of alluded secrets. I was really eager to pick some more up, but was disappointed to find that the once large collection had been reduce to two extremely tiny shelves - maybe 30 books in all, and most of them to do with the extraterrestrial, which I have little interest in (I'm already convinced there are inter-planetary beings out there).

I found a host of other books I wanted to purchase however, and they have a wonderfully large selection of classics bound in old, beautiful leather and cotton covers... Unfortunately I realised that I had barely any cash on me and no cards, so I had to settle for purchasing one book, instead of the twenty I might have purchased had I had access to more money...

I tossed up between a two-volume set of Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, bound in beautiful red leather with gold embellishments, and a very blase cover of Wally Lamb's 'I Know This Much Is True' - both books I've been meaning to read. I ended up purchasing I Know This Much Is True, since the price was unbeatable. I plan on going back and buying Anna Karenina if it's still there, but if it's not I won't be too sad because I have nowhere safe to put the beautiful volumes and I'd only feel bad when it ended up on the floor :\


Okay, that's my story. :P

I agree J, sometimes the experience and pleasure of browsing and purchasing from a book store is well worth the extra cost.

I very much want to read The Year of the Flood, so please do let us know what you think of it! It sounds fascinating.

Thanks for the links, Elvet :) SFFworld.com looks great, and I'll check out the others soon :)

This is the only site I really use for books, barring reading Amazon for reviews on occasion. I purchase most of my books from Aphrohead.com, if that counts as a resource :)

I also like to browse the 'http://www.welcometothevelvet.com/' forums on occasion, though I don't post there.

For the writers, I've found http://www.writing.com to be a pretty good resource, though I've only made my first (weak) contribution today, after months of lurking. It has lots of little contests and a cute 'points' system to spur you to write, something I appreciate as a lazy writer.

Ah Jelena - I wrote a reply to you, but it seems to have been lost in the abyss of the interweb.

Basically what I said was - I can't encourage you enough to at the very least check out your nearest second-hand bookshop - they are almost always full of hidden treasures, these often being in the places where you least expect it. I've made a habit of checking out any second-hand bookshop I'm fortunate to come across, and have thus been exposed to many a small-town/country bookstore - and here have been where I have found many of my treasures. Leather-bound copies of Homer's Iliad, thousand-page books on the occult, copies of books from my favourite authors from just 25 cents... I certainly have found some special things in those seemingly humble tiny second-hand bookstores. Definitely worth checking out :)

And - I wouldn't dream of letting go of a single book - or game - I own... I'm a natural pack-rat. There are many books I have multiple copies of that I still couldn't bare to give away. I have commitment issues with objects. I commit to them FOREVER.

I read this book a few years ago at the behest of my boyfriend, who, despite being an absolute non-reader, loves and adores this book.

I think J. King hit the nail on the head when he said it's a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. In my case, I disliked many aspects of the book - I think it's likely I disliked more than I liked, even.

I really couldn't sympathise with the main character, I found some of the reactions to certain situations quite unbelievable and frustrating, and I think the ending was a cop-out. However... overall I did enjoy the experience. Why did I give it four stars? I'm not really sure. Do I think, personally, that it deserved four stars? On reflection, I think perhaps I feel it's a 3. However, seeing how many people enjoyed the book, including my boyfriend who refuses to read a thing but would defend this book with his life, I felt that the way the book touched so many people deserved a slightly bumped up rating.

Is it juvenile? A little. But the main character is just a boy. That being said, the main characters of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy were just kids, but nothing about the books were juvenile. While we're making the comparison, I mentioned that I found the way some situations were dealt with 'frustrating' - people have tried to defend this with the fact that the boy in the situations is so young, but given his supposed intellectual status, I believe that in the situations I spoke of, intelligence would have trumped immaturity or innocence. I never found the way Pullman's characters dealt with situations to be unbelievable in this way.

All that being said, I did enjoy the book, and I wish there was more buffer between the middle and the end - I would have gladly read more. I'd suggest you read the book, if only for the sake of reading a classic.

Wow Trav! And I thought I was bad :D I've purchased 21 books this month but you've got me beat. All of them were new though, and I'm about due for a trip to a second-hand book store. You have an exciting selection now - The Wizards of Odd sounds extremely intriguing, you'll have to let me know what you think when you get around to it. Day of the Triffids is a book I particularly liked, and I think I've mentioned my love and adoration for The Golden Compass and its sequels more times than I should have.

I wonder what you'll think of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - have you read any of Ellison's other work? I've been wanting to buy the I Have No Mouth game for what, at least 9 years now? I'd definitely be interested in reading the story.

I've never read any of Ellison's other stuff (that I recall - I think there was a short story or two I may have come across in the past) but have it in my future plans. Do let me know what you think :)

I just purchased Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, Books of Blood 1-3 by Clive Barker, Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite, as well as The Sex Mook: What Is Our Sex? and The Death Mook: How do we die? by Vignette Press.

I bought Heart-Shaped Box because I've been meaning to for a long time now, I feel like I'm not doing my job as a Stephen King fan if I don't read his son's first, and supposedly great, work. Exquisite Corpse I perused in a book store, and was sufficiently intrigued by the smutty and unapologetic tone of the book, which, so far as I could tell, deals with a homosexual serial killer. I bought Clive Barker's Books of Blood 1-3 in the wake of being spurred on by Traveller's recent appraisal of Barker's work - I'd been meaning to read these for far, far too long now and I'm glad I've finally got one on the way.

I found 'Death Mook' in a book store, I was first attracted to the beautiful, gothic art on the cover and then to the hodge-podge of articles and pictures contained within the book, all dealing with a fascinating aspect of, insight into, or rumor about death. The mix of interesting, thought-provoking content written by different authors, coupled with unique and eye-catching illustrations, meant I was almost intrigued enough to buy it right then and there from the book store - something I never do, due to the hideous over-pricing of book stores in my city. I looked it up as soon as I got online, and found to my chagrin that none of the book stores I usually purchase from sell the book online. Finally, I somehow ended up at the publisher's website, where they were selling copies of the book. I saw that there was another 'mook' - apparently terminology for something 'more than a magazine, not quite a book' (I don't see the qualm with calling it a book) - this one on sex. So I figured why not, and have purchased the two together. I love finding hard-to-obtain books with unique content, and the art is a big bonus.

Something I really wanted to purchase this time around but couldn't quite afford is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. It's a horror novel with an 'experimental' approach - apparently the prose is often 'shaped' - for instance, some pages only have one or two words on them. I love experimental literature, and I've heard this is a great example of it. Unfortunately I can't find the book for less than $30, and there are too many great books currently on my list for me to justify purchasing one book when I could get three for the same price. Eventually :D

Excited about your latest book purchase? Just bought ten books and not sure which to read first? Post them here, let us know what you bought and why you bought 'em :)

Thanks for the thread, Trav :D Glad to read your review of Barker - sounds right up my alley. I'll be getting at least the first volume of the Books of Blood omnibus in my next book purchase.

Thanks for looking at Horror Stories for me - I'm excited you noted Lovecraft's exposition, that's something I'm very interested to read. Let me know what you think of the stories :)

I just finished Infected by Scott Sigler and The Hot Zone by Richard preston. I could tell Infected was Sigler's first novel, especially in the way that the book picked up as it went along and steadily became smoother and more interesting to read. It was an interesting book, but all-in-all not, in my opinion, a great one, and I don't think I'll pick up its sequels.

The Hot Zone was fascinating in some ways, but I felt it was very anticlimactic in others. Preston's descriptions of how the Ebola virus infected humans and what it did to them were simultaneously horrifying and awe-inspiring, but I found many of the events themselves within the book weren't fleshed out enough to have warranted my taking the time to read them. I think the writing could have been vastly improved, particularly at the beginning of the book, where it seemed quite obvious to me that Preston didn't know exactly how he wanted to tell the story. I found myself re-writing in my head his sentences, to give them more flow. The beginning of the book started like a report of potential facts, listed one after the other, whereas later Preston seemed to have found his groove and was better at winding his facts into a more story-like narrative. All in all though, it was an enjoyable, eye-opening read that I would recommend, if simply for the education what exactly the Ebola virus is and does.

I browsed through a bookstore yesterday and American Gods also caught my eye. I wrote it down on a list of books I was interested in buying (I never buy from bookstores here - they do something like a minimum 300% markup - online book shopping only thanks) and was also very curious. I'm also a Neil Gaiman virgin, barring a short story I wasn't too impressed with. So I'll take those recommendations too. Trav, let me know if you decide to grab one of his books and perhaps we can do a joint-reading. I've been meaning to read a Gaiman novel for a long time :)